The tunnel can be used to solve the problem of flash floods and also ease traffic congestion, said Adil Bushnak, who heads several companies active in water, environment and energy services.

Referring to Jeddah’s flash flood that claimed 120 lives and damaged properties worth millions of riyals last November, Bushnak told Arab News there are 11 wadis in Jeddah that are natural drainage courses. “But we have constructed buildings on these wadis, blocking the flow of water.”

To deal with the situation, Bushnak suggested building of a dual-purpose SMART tunnel which in normal days can be used as a motorway and in times of rain can be used to allow rainwater to flow.

SMART (Stormwater Manage-ment and Road Tunnel) has been built in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur. The 9.7-km tunnel was conceived primarily to mitigate the recurring floods in the city. However, at the design stage the dual-purpose concept was born from the ingenuity of the project proponents and the motorway tunnel was integrated into the system to relieve traffic congestion at the main Southern Gateway to the city center.

Bushnak said flooding is a global phenomenon and no country is free from it.

“But we should learn from experiences of others. Malaysians came up with a solution to the flooding problem in their capital, which is also the country’s business hub. We can also do the same thing to save our city from future devastation,” he said.

Referring to the waste-water reclamation, Bushnak said the Jeddah municipality should stop building centralized waste-water plants and instead promote smaller units in neighborhoods.

“All the waste has to go to the south of the city. Then how do you distribute it after treatment? It is impractical,” he said. He pointed out that decentralized plants would allow reclamation of water at district and neighborhood levels.

“With the new technology you can even build a plant under your garage and nobody would know that such a plant exists,” he added. Claiming that waste water management is not developed in Saudi Arabia, Bushnak said that currently the Kingdom was reusing “less than a quarter of one percent of what we use, which is practically nothing.”

According to him, this is happening because water is cheap in Saudi Arabia. The government heavily subsidizes the resource.

“There is no regulation. Anyone can take it from well and sell it to industry. Why should an industry invest in recycling its waste if it can buy water at much less. Then there is no enforcement. You can just dump your waste anywhere and let the government handle it. That’s what’s happening.”

He said some companies were dumping waste into sea because the law is vague. “It is enforced on the weak. Most polluting are the government departments and big companies,” he said.